behavioural science 9
- Belief in luck seriously affects the economic efficiency of a community where it is common
- Where people are habitually compared on efficiency, the instinct of workmanship turns into invidious comparison
Thorstein Veblen
American economist and sociologist (1857 to 1929); author of The Theory of the Leisure Class.
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What Thorstein Veblen says most about
taste 3
- A taste for sports perhaps reflects a boyish temperament and marks arrested moral development
- Signs of expensiveness come to be perceived as beauty in the goods that carry them
capitalism 2
- The propertied class relates to the economy through acquisition and exploitation, not production
- A leisure class emerges at the same time as ownership, because both come from the same economic forces
motivation 2
- The motive at the root of ownership is emulation
- The aim of accumulating wealth is to rank high in financial strength against the rest of the community